Rich Hawkins: The Last Plague

Ralph nodded. “I certainly did, boss.” He moved some empty bottles out of the way and placed the chair in the centre of the room.

Joel looked at the chair, puzzled.

A female police officer entered the room, followed by a tall, wide-shouldered man wearing a leather jacket, with a greasy side-parting and a neck like a shaven bear. The man nodded a curt greeting and stood in the corner of the room, arms folded.

“Oh shit,” said Joel. His voice was uneven and boyish.

The woman looked to be in her late forties, dyed blonde hair and too much make-up. Eyeliner coated on like paint and blood-red lipstick. Her breasts were almost bursting through her uniform. Crow’s feet and poor skin under fake tan. One eye was bloodshot.

A short leather skirt barely covered her arse. She was carrying a small black bag and an Alba CD player.

Ralph started laughing.

“Is there a Mr. Joel Gosling here?” the woman said.

Joel raised his hand cautiously. “That’s, uh, me…”

Frank sat next to Magnus on the sofa.

“I’m afraid you’re under arrest, Mr. Gosling,” she said.

“Read him his rights!” said Ralph. He finished his beer and grabbed another one.

“You’re not a real police officer, are you?” Joel asked the woman.

In the corner her minder smirked and shook his head.

“Luckily for you, I’m not, my dear,” she said. “But I’ve heard you’ve been a very bad boy.”

On the sofa, Frank, Ralph and Magnus struggled to stop from breaking into fits of laughter.

Joel swallowed. “You’re a stripper, aren’t you?”

“I’ll let you decide that, my dear. Now come sit down on this chair and we’ll get on with your interrogation.”

“Brilliant,” said Ralph. He turned to Frank. “You owe me fifty quid for the stripper, okay?”

“Fifty quid? Bloody hell, Ralph.”

“She was the cheapest one I could get on such short notice.”

“Yeah, looks like it.”

“Pay me tomorrow, mate.”

Joel sat down on the chair, guided by the stripper. She smiled at him. He tried to return the smile, but it came out as an awkward grimace.

“My fiancée’s gonna kill me if she finds out.”

“Don’t worry, my dear,” the stripper said. She undid her uniform and took off her skirt. Leathery breasts and a pot belly. Sagging buttocks the same colour as a creosoted fence. The back of her thong vanished into darkness. She placed the CD player on the floor then reached into her bag and produced a bottle of squirty cream.

Joel went pale.

The stripper pressed a button on the CD player. Britney Spears began to sing ‘I’m a Slave 4 U’. The stripper wiggled her arse and giggled.

“She’s got cellulite,” Ralph whispered as he took out his camera-phone.

Two hours later the stripper was gone, and Joel was unconscious, a bottle of beer in his hand and whipped cream smeared around his mouth. Frank dozed on the sofa. Ralph was on the floor, snoring loudly, his stomach gurgling.

“Lightweights,” said Magnus. He smiled and swayed. A warm numbness filled his body. He ate the last slice of pizza and licked grease from his fingers.

The house was silent apart from the creak and groan of its wooden joints and brick walls, reshaping itself in the night.

Magnus walked outside. The breeze stirred the grass. The Corsa was a squat shadow. He liked the darkness. It was peaceful and there were so few moments of peace these days. He filled his lungs with the night air.

The moon was blanketed by clouds. Abyssal darkness surrounded the house, like the voids between galaxies. No lights from towns or villages. This was how the land would have been before the rise of man.

The gaps in the cloud cover were filled with stars. Constellations aflame. Distant suns. Ancient suns. Dying suns. Some had been dead for millennia. Beautiful.

He had read about solar flares; about what would happen if one reached out and enveloped the earth. A temperature of twenty million degrees kelvin would turn the oceans to steam and drown the world in fire. Suck the oxygen from the air. Turn every organism to ash. Cities would be destroyed by immense walls of flame and the planet would be left as a burnt piece of dead rock floating in space.

He felt small and unworthy like bacteria.

His hands shook as he took out a packet of cigarettes. He was supposed to have quit the habit. He lit one, took a long drag on it. The smoke was chemical bliss inside him; made his pulse quicken, made his bones feel like feathers.

He checked his mobile. Three missed calls from Debbie. Another text message. He read it, shaking his head.

He was sick of her. He was sick of taking care of her and the boys. She had burdened him for five years, with her illness, her complexes and her paranoia. She had drained him of his strength and his will. They hadn’t had sex in over a year and the last time they had he had struggled to hide his disgust at her obese, sweaty, stinking body. Sores on the inside of her thighs where the skin had rubbed together and chafed. Hairy legs. Pubic hair spilling from her underwear like a gathering of spider legs. Skin the colour of the filling in a sausage roll. She often forgot to take her medication, causing mood swings and temper tantrums.

Magnus toked on the cigarette, looked at the stars, wished they could take him away.

Sometimes, lying in bed as she grunted and snored next to him, he fantasised about burying her in a custom-made coffin and crying crocodile tears at her graveside. He often thought of caving in her face with a hammer and laughing in relief as he did so. He thought of murder. Then he would be free.

But he couldn’t kill Debbie. He was a coward. He’d never even been in a fight. And he still loved her. That was the worst part about it. He couldn’t help himself. He had known about her problems when they first met. There had been an attraction on a fundamental level. She had been slim, but curvy in the right places. The sex had been fantastic; the way she would lower herself onto him, grind upon him, press her skin against his. It had been primal, manic fucking. She used to bite him, make him bleed sometimes. He had loved that.

But as the years passed, and they got married, her condition worsened. She changed into nothing more than a mound of useless meat.

But he still loved her.

He finished the cigarette, dropped it, put it out with his foot. He spat.

The clouds lifted, revealing the scarred moon in its cradle. Silver light fell over the countryside. A patchwork quilt of fields.

Thunder roared above, and Magnus jumped. He watched the moon vanish. The stars were gone and the clouds were moving and broiling like an ocean in heavy weather. Thunder boomed again. There was a great pressure upon him, trying to push him into the earth and pressing down on him.

Something was in the sky above him, directly overhead. Something huge and silent. He sensed rather than saw it.

His nose began to bleed.

Magnus fell down, sprawled on the ground. His bowels felt like a sack of hot soup.

The thunder sounded like the giant bones of skeletal gods grinding together.

Magnus curled into a ball. He began to cry. A childhood terror gripped him. The fear of monsters and being lost in the darkness.

He whimpered. The ground was cold, sucking at his warmth.

The world faded away.

Ralph awoke, ran his tongue over furred teeth. A shard of pepperoni was stuck between two molars. He gave up trying to loosen it with his tongue. He burped and it tasted of stomach fluids. He was shivering.

He sat up, hands over his face, groaning. The world tilted to one side.

Looking through the window, he saw the sky brightening. The wall clock ticked like a pulse. Just past four-thirty. The room was strewn with the wreckage of the night. The smell of stale beer. He wiped his mouth.